


Awake

by berouja



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26074447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berouja/pseuds/berouja
Summary: Taemin finds himself in a small town with a mysterious man and a mysterious book.
Relationships: Choi Minho/Lee Taemin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 16
Collections: Summer of SHINee Round 2





	Awake

The contents of my dreams are varied, strange, disjointed. Sometimes, I do not wish to sleep. Sometimes, the desire for sleep overwhelms me–but my body does not fall into it; does not find comfort in any bed. I remember when I was awake for forty hours, and I was begging for sleep, crying just so I’d sleep. But I still couldn’t. And when sleep does come, it is never pleasant. Tonight I awoke again from my sleep screaming. The feeling of falling is an unwelcome, but familiar sensation to me. This is not the first time I find myself awakened by fear – and I suppose this would not be the last. All I know is that this must end somehow. As all things find their beginnings, I am certain that even nightmares will end as well. It must; otherwise how am I supposed to make sense of this dread.

My therapist calls it “survivor’s guilt”, but for me it’s just the feeling of being left out. I told her that I didn’t wish that others survived, only that I wish I wasn’t left behind. She told me that that was me idealizing death, but for me it’s just a longing for an ending.

<>

Two months ago, my publishing house sent me to a Literature Conference abroad. Writers, publishers, editors, and all sorts of people involved in the literature world were invited. I was lucky to have been chosen. It was supposed to be an opportunity to meet new people, in my case, writers looking to publish their work. I consider myself a competent editor – straightforward, unrelenting, but also patient and understanding of the writer’s needs and idiosyncrasies. I am good at working with people and bringing out the best in them. That’s why my writers all have won awards and are best sellers. I pride myself in my work – in the work I help created and shaped. Being an editor is a fascinating job. Sometimes it’s thankless, but I suppose that is to be expected when your name is not published. Editors are the writers’ guiding hand, the invisible force that gets stories come to life.

Two months ago I boarded a plane going to Singapore.

Two months ago the plane I boarded crashed halfway to Singapore.

I was the only survivor.

Two months ago I was proud to be an editor, and now I can’t even read a newspaper let alone a story.

<>

My good friend Jinki (who is also one of the most awarded poets of our generation) is a kind and patient soul. We’ve known each other since college when we still had high hopes of words changing the world. He wrote, one beautiful poem after another, and I found myself enamoured by the depth of his words. I always thought that someone as talented like him needed direction. Back then, I was lost. I didn’t know what I wanted; only that I wanted to a life surrounded by books. I was always afraid to write, thinking that my experiences, dreams, and imaginings are better left unwritten – suspended in an abyss of non-existence. But Jinki saw that my love for words needed to go somewhere. He understood that a love like that, despite my trepidation (or was it cowardice? I can never really tell the difference nowadays) needed to take hold on to something. Thus, my work as an editor began. We’ve worked for years now; four of his collected works on poetry were edited by me and all four of them were bestsellers and critically acclaimed.

It was also Jinki that suggested I take a break. He had an apartment in a quaint tourist town near the mountains. He told me it was quiet there but not so far removed from society that one would feel isolated. He offered me the apartment and told me I could stay as long as I needed to. I agreed if only to get him off my back and perhaps because deep down I knew I needed the quiet it promises to offer.

<>

The small town is beside the numerous, rolling hills. It shines with the light of the small houses, diffused through fog. The view is magnificent, if not unsettling. The town is shrouded in fog and the air is constantly washed by rain. I could swear it sometimes smells like mildew here, if only because the sun shies away from it. It is beautiful in the morning drenched in fog, in light rain, is glorious; a city which slowly wakes instead of pumping itself up with caffeine until days are strung together into the decades of its existence, and even then, it cannot sleep, afraid of half-remembered dreams. The hills spread out in arrows of light, that even the fog that constantly looms over them is tinged with yellow and orange. It’s a beautiful town that spreads itself thinner and thinner with the masculine regularity of its geometry. It’s all grids and right angles, long corridors running north and east and south (the hills are on the west). The streets are made of stone and not cement which makes it even more cinematic. Its people are polite and helpful, if not a little bit prideful and aloof with strangers. It has all the basic necessities one could ever need – a small grocery, a few established restaurants, a pub, a lush park with an artificial lake in which the most majestic swans I’ve seen live. Most importantly, the town has a small bookstore.

<>

I use bookstores like libraries and I’m not ashamed. I sit out on the patio, watching the children play and run at the park across. I sometimes hear restless mothers as they pass by to go visit the local grocery. I sit absorbed in a book I have no intention of buying. Sitting, sometimes, without reading with an open book before me to ward off strangers’ promising conversations, pretending they don’t exist. Sometimes I walk around aimlessly at the store, looking for anything that would catch my eye. Perhaps I’ll contemplate on buying a book or two. For a small bookstore in a small town, the bookstore seems so full and promising. It has everything from the classics to the contemporary works, to the awful movie tie-in books with movie posters as its covers, to exciting graphic novels. It even has a second-hand section which I often find myself in.

I find the oddest things tucked inside the books I find in this section. Besides the usual bookmarks from everywhere “Bailey/Coy Books: 414 Broadway East, Seattle, WA; Telephone 323-8842;” receipts from still other bookstores, bookplates, I have found an occasional photograph (in sepia, the front fender of a car which looked suspiciously space-aged, so I’m guessing that it’s from the late 60s), a crisp 10-Rupee note, half of a 20-pesos bill, tissue paper.

Every book was read by somebody before me. (Of course they have. What I mean is that the same book that I am holding was held by somebody else.) I find their dog-ears amusing, marking a brilliantly written page, a particularly funny satire, an obscure reference.

I realize that the anticipation (and absolute realism) I approach books with could not be mine alone. Somebody else had felt giddy, had cried, had laughed, had put down the book before me. Somebody else had brought his life into a book, had lived in the same book. In this, a new book does not compare with an old one.

But this book I found was different, to say the least. It’s not the age that makes this book remarkable to me – neither its yellow-edged pages nor its black leather cover make it any different from other old books. No, this one has something to it. It has no author on it, no title, and only the first page has something written on it.

_Nothing came here before you,  
not wind, not sun:  
  
never the shelter of a cloud’s shadow.  
  
I forget all pasts  
in the newness of you,  
  
thinking: my chest is uncharted,  
  
the boundaries of my skin  
and the depths of my hair  
  
become undiscovered,  
  
as though a whole library  
of maps was razed.  
  
But here, between  
my collarbones was a battle,  
  
and over my back fell storms.  
  
Neither wind nor sun to erase,  
only time, flowing  
  
like water down threads,  
  
blurring everything, like  
blindness falling slowly,  
  
and everything white as rain.  
  
Until you arrive  
upon that emptied scene  
  
troubled by the blankness._

<>

This is a place I chose for myself, unencumbered by the ghosts of history and of relations. I am as unknown to it as it is to me. Its streets are unexplored. Its hills, uncursed yet (as they shall be in the future; much maligned are those hills, and rightly so, for all the to-ing and fro-ing up and down their steepness).  
  
That it was my choice meant much. That it was a town I wasn’t born into, a town where I knew nobody–an open town, free and fresh–this mattered much.

Perhaps I could say that it mattered most.

Each time I step out of the apartment, I have this feeling of return: buoyant and clear and certain and light; it was a homecoming–something I’ve never felt coming back to the house I grew up in. And in a short time, I have fallen in love with this town. How could I not have fallen in love with that?–the liberation it meant for me, the return to my choice?

The bells ringing out from the church at dawn and dusk, at noon, at three—ceaseless tolling in sun or storm—signaling that the light is yet to be spent, or had already been spent. But through it all, the thought of the mysterious black book still lingers.

I would often come back to the store, back to the aisle where they sell used books. I search for a similar book, but to no avail. I keep reading the page where the poem is written and keep on thinking about how familiar its words are. I am certain I haven’t read it before, but it feels personal. It feels intimate; it’s as if the words were carefully chosen to appeal to me. Or perhaps it is about me.

I talked to the lone cashier, a shorter guy with silver hair. His bright hair is particularly outstanding in this idyllic town, yet he seems to belong in here as much as any brick paved on the streets. His name is Jonghyun and according to him, the bookstore is owned by his best friend. He is running it now as the said friend is currently unable to do so. When I inquired further about the missing bookstore owner, his usually welcoming and kind face suddenly looked ached and sad. As a temporary proprietor, of course he does not know where the used books are sourced, only that most of the books in the aisle were personal copies of the owner themself. 

I debated whether I should keep the book or give it back. It’s pretty much useless anyway considering that only one page has anything written to it. I decided to keep it to myself for now.

I left the bookstore with more questions than answers. Ironic, considering I went there to seek answers. But never mind that. If there is anything I’ve learned from life itself is that when you are ready to seek answers to a question, the question will change. And then what? Life then becomes a cycle of hide and seek where the questions always hide and where the answers always become irrelevant.

I strolled down the park nearby, found a spot under the sturdy acacia tree and took out another book I was carrying. I sat there for a while, observing the joggers pass by. It was then that I met him.

<>

He was beautiful, but not in the physical sense. Beauty has no physical characteristics. Things are beautiful, but there is no such thing as something which is, simply, beauty. It is an idea. One could say that the oscillating universe is beautiful, but without the perceiver, then there is no judgment that could be made.

Beauty is phenomenological. It is an experience.

The way he sauntered towards me, confidently and purposeful was beautiful.

The way he took the seat beside me with ease and without regard to my personal space was beautiful.

The way he smiled, as if he was an old friend meeting me after a long time was disarming.

The way he held out his hand to greet me; the way he squeezed my hand firmly and intently was oddly inoffensive.

The way he came into my life, swiftly and unceremoniously was beautiful.

Unexpected, yet welcome. Passing, yet lasting. Something is beautiful when it passes, when it never lasts.  
  
This is the nature of the beautiful: if it lingers, it stagnates, and loses that which is fundamental to it, that which makes it precious. It is this: That it is fleeting; that it will never last.

This is what makes beautiful things so desirable: if it never dies, then we would never be suffused with loss. Loss is attendant to beauty. If we do not lose it, we never recognize that it has value. And if we do never lose it, the fear that it could be lost fills the same shoes.

If we do not lose it, we take it for granted.

Decay conceals itself under the mask of the beautiful: a glance is enough, a smile, even more. And have you heard of the face that launched an expedition to reclaim it and laid to waste an entire world? That it could be lost, that it will be lost. Helen would never be young forever. Her face would sag under the weight of her matrimonial bed, her duties as a wife, and the slow death of living. But for that one burning moment enough to enkindle desire and raze a city–she was beautiful. This is enough.  
  
That she is herself and no other–and no other could be like her. That beautiful things are themselves and are not others–that they will be lost and never regained–this is what makes the beautiful.  
  
And the commonplace can never, by definition be beautiful, unless one sees it in a different light, something which one has never thought that it would possess.

So beauty also must hold with it the ability to awe, to surprise.

But think of the price we all must pay to possess the beautiful, as though by possessing, we ourselves are made beautiful in turn.

This is how I met him. With beauty. With awe. And this is how my life has started to truly change, where this town truly changed me.

His name is Minho. Our fateful meeting at the park never left my mind. As we sat there talking about the weather I am reminded of the banality of things. Our conversation never steered into something deeper or complicated. We revelled at the simplicity of it all. We are, after all, just two strangers.

And yet.

Yet, something deeper brews.

<>

When I got home that day I decided to hide the black book away. I opened it again, but this time, another page was filled. I couldn’t have missed it the first time as I was certain I checked every page of the book.

I was never one to believe in the supernatural or occult, but something in me was firm in saying that it must be.

How else would you explain a book that writes itself? Let alone a book that writes poetry as compelling as this:

_He was beautiful, so I took him in with open arms,  
and all of myself spread open before him,  
unaware of how easily he can learn to hide in the quiet  
recesses of bone, hide in marrow grown spongy  
with hope._

_With open arms, like a guest  
who parted walls and then later broke them down  
for the fun of it. And there is no way,  
no way yet, they tell me, of how to get him out._

It should scare me. The way this book operates is beyond any normal human experience. But I cannot stop myself from keeping the book close to me. Its mystery obliges me to keep searching.

<>

There’s a heat wave in town. I woke up drenched in sweat, clutching my thin bed sheet. 

In my mind, this town only exists when shrouded by fog. Some small irony there: it is more fully itself when far less of itself is seen. When after ten feet, all vision is clouded, or when, in the very early hours of the morning, one’s own hands cannot be seen and the bikers wend their way through twisting streets down hills after our long days out doing god-knows-what.

The great illusion of the fog is that what it conceals would never end. There are far worse lies to believe, far more damaging ones.

The shade under the acacia tree remains enticing. Not because it shields from the unbearable sun but because of the promise of a better company.

I didn’t take a book with me out today. I had no reason to anyway. I sat at my usual spot under the acacia tree, waiting for Minho. Not long after, he surely came. He’s all dressed in black, like the one he wore yesterday when I first met him. He didn’t seem hot under the clothes he’s wearing. His carefree smile is somehow refreshing and almost made me forget how hot it is outside.

He asked me what I was doing lounging at this heat. I smiled sheepishly, not wanting to reveal the real reason.

That I was waiting for him. That I wanted to see him again.

It’s odd that a stranger you only met a day ago could make you feel so attached, especially since we never really talked about anything of importance.

Odd, but somehow, it felt right.

<>

“What was your name again?” he asked me. I told him my name. Lee Taemin. I told him that I am from the city (his nod made it seem like he was impressed, but I know better) and that I work as an editor for a known publishing company (his nod made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal, but I know better). I told him all manner of things about me – the asinine details that one tells when you just met someone.

Throughout it all he never talked about himself, only giving out noncommittal sounds of agreement. It felt good just talking about yourself this way. Just the surface details without getting too deep. It feels like I am getting re-acquainted with myself.

I reckon Minho knew this too. He was content on letting me ramble on about myself. 

He was staring at me the whole time I was talking. His lips forming the words to a language I recognize but cannot understand, then asking me something again for a change.

“You don’t look your age–you look younger.” He told me when I eventually wound up talking about my age.

“But I don’t feel my age either… there are times that I feel like I’ve lived several lifetimes ago, or that I was born too late. My body cannot keep up with the pace of my thoughts.” I told him. He understood what I meant by that.

I wish I could tell him the reason I don’t feel my age. I wish I could tell him that death came so close and that it was just by sheer luck I am even here. I wish I could tell him about my nightmares and my desire to have a moment of quiet inside my head.

I wish I could tell him more about the things that really matter.

But for now, all I can muster are the asinine details. And he seems content to be only given that.

We talked for hours, it seems. Until we both realized that the sun has set and the moon has started to rise. “I shall see you again, I hope, and hear you again under this same tree” he told me as he left.

<>

The mysterious black book (the title is still up for debate) sat lonely at my bedside table. I checked on it out of curiosity, perhaps even out of an expectation that something is added.

The self-writing magic book (is this too descriptive for a book title?) didn’t fail me. When I opened it again another poem is written.

_Of course it isn’t as we thought it would be._

_Our bodies could only do so much_

_and the spaces between them could only be arrived at_

_propositionally:_

_there are an infinite number of midpoints_

_before our touch could land on one another._

_Or prepositionally–_

_it’s always an above or beside,_

_beneath, between,_

_and always the vastness_

_of the just-before._

_We could only do so much._

I am convinced more and more that the magical poetry book (this sounds too unimaginative for a book as magical as this) is meant to be mine; as if somehow I was destined to find it amongst the thousands of books in that bookstore. Its secrets remain hidden from me, but I am determined to find out what it hides.

<>

I visited the bookstore the next day. Jonghyun was there, as usual, manning the counter with his perfect mix of welcoming yet bored demeanour. I asked him if it would be okay for me to stay on the used books aisle and check on the books. I figure if there are answers, I might be able to find it there. He agreed.

When I got there I was surprised to see Minho there, browsing at the books. I called his name rather loudly and he looked embarrassed having his name called out excitedly like that.

“You like books too?” I asked him.

“Everyone likes stories.” He answered. “I like good stories, especially ones that beautifully tie up the threads in the end.”

We talked about books that day and my agenda of seeking answers was put on hold. He asked me what my opinion on books is. I told him that some books are easy: no matter how thin, or how thick they are, you just breeze through them, tear through like a train through a two-street town. 

Some books are slow: you take it gradually, as though chewing, savouring, wishing that it would never end. You put it down where you wish, afraid that if you continue reading, some spell would be broken; that your fingers have grown roots into the soil of the book, and there is no hurry to finish.

Some books are difficult: sometimes they are difficult for a reason–that it is in the uncovering which one finds the pleasure.

I told him that books are like people. Diverse and different, but has a sense of universality to them. Books are like people because each is a different story, but anyone who is willing to sit down and read it would always find something relatable within the books.

Books are experiences bound in paper.

There are books I would love to read and explore. Books in which I would trade everything just to live in.

There would always be books which I would never be able to read–for the sheer fact that there isn’t enough time. We all are limited by this temporal duration.

I told him that if I could sell my soul for an eternity simply to read books, to live, to love. (But mainly to read.) I told him that characters are timeless. They will never die. And even if they do die by the end, one could always return to the point where they were still alive.

“Isn’t there a strangeness in wanting to live forever simply to read?” he asked.

“Perhaps. But you see what I really want is to live the lives I read.” I told him.

<>

“Would you like to have dinner with me?” I asked Minho. I was feeling braver than usual when I asked him that. I know I haven’t known him for too long, but I do know that I like him enough. Not as a lover, at least not yet, but even just a friend.

The rarity of finding someone who you are comfortable to open up with cannot be understated, even if that someone is an utter and complete stranger.

“I can’t. I have a limited time out, you see. But I am glad to spend them all with you,” he answered.

<>

I spent my night drinking bottles of wine in my balcony. I watched the sunset. Itwas livid earlier this evening, like the beginnings of a nasty bruise. If there is anything which I would take away from this town, it would be these sunsets over the hills: bright, hopeless, solitary.

The sunsets, and my watching of them. It’s easy to do: one picks a spot, high above the hills which rise behind the city like its spine–undulating, with peaks and narrows and declivities

Often, I’ve felt like I’ve been sleeping through life. One of the men I knew in the past called it my fundamental dissatisfaction with living–that life is an endless exercise in futility, an experiment in boredom–and the results of which, have been, and shall be, invariably dull. I’ve not simply been sleeping through life. I’ve been reading through life, and the lives I have led sequestered in the various prisons of pages have led me to think that I cannot survive out here, that there is nothing for me out here, and I had done well by choosing the near-monasticism of reading.

This, I do not regret. At least, not very often.

Thinking of sleep–the forgiveness it so generously bestows–gives me comfort. Something to look forward to. (At least now, while my dreams are still untroubled by the darkness which threatens everything; I am willing to exchange that darkness of sleep with the darkness of life.)

There are better ways of living, or so I’ve been told. I have yet to stumble across these finer methods.

<>

_The rain will fall anyway,_

_this day, or the next,_

_this week, or the next,_

_this year, this lifetime,_

_in this eternity._

_It is only inevitable._

_What matters is how one_

_responds to the rain._

_Does one rush out and dance?_

_Or keep indoors under thick sheets_

_and dream?_

_The rain will fall._

_Weeks would be swallowed up_

_by storms, and the sun never shine_

_for days–and instead,_

_the prismatic fog._

_The rain will fall, as it must._

_Bareheadedness is the same_

_as rushing out in galoshes_

_and under an umbrella._

<>

“I am sorry I did not go to dinner with you last night.” Minho told me the next day. I was in the bookstore, more resolute to seek answers this time.

“It’s okay. You are not obliged to say yes.”

“But I wanted to.”

“Well, how about tonight?” I asked him.

<>

We spent the night drinking and speaking of Egyptian Creation-Myths, the sky fellating himself until his seed spilled to the ground and became earth. Innumerable spirits were consumed, banished from cages of brown glass. How many times had I closed my eyes as the hands of this stranger went to my face and touched me? How many times had I promised that he was no longer a stranger to me, that I knew him, that he need not wrestle with my mind to gain entrance to it

He was a stranger with words which could rival inscriptions upon cathedral architraves, words that were both foreign-sounding and pleasantly familiar. No, he was not a stranger–he had a name, he has a name, but in my mind, he carries a different name. His face is attached to a name I thought of while kissing him, a name which I would never tell him, but I would gladly tell you: I call him Poet. If words could designate as much as names do, that was what I would call him, Poet.  
  
With his words, he becomes a cartographer of the secret islands which float like dust-motes between the two of us. He teaches the secret language of stars, and holds in trust the mystic tools of navigation. He, too, is an astronomer of dreams, of metaphors that are as lamps beside the sea, borne by patient wives.

We were walking together, my head light from sleeplessness, the intoxication of words still within me, for I carry around bits of songs, a fragment of a poem, the closing line of a book–all within my tenuous existence, as if by these words I connect myself to a unity known to others. So we sang. We sang of Greyhound stations, of Utopia, of journeys which we all must make. We spoke in song, as though normal speech was beneath us, as though my off-key voice and his wondrous melody were prayers. He and I were priests in the cult of words.

We talked until the morning, until the heat becoming more intolerable. We dragged our sleepless bodies towards apartment. My eyes were heavy and craved rest. He was standing there, looking at me, saying goodbye. I went through the door, like I’ve done many times before.

This time, though, this time, I am certain – certain that this stranger who I only met not a week ago has become my addiction.

<>

I had a dreamless sleep, something that has never happened to me since the day of the crash.

It was peaceful. At long last. I woke up feeling like a new person. _I am a new person,_ I told myself. I am finally unencumbered by my guilt in living.

This town has given me rebirth, and for that I am grateful. I opened up the black book of poems (a better title, but still needs some panache)and flipped through the pages expectantly.

As anticipated, something new is written.

_In this world of secret glances_

_where eyes meet and meanings are lost–_

_I came to you as a child,_

_unknown, arriving_

_in a basket of reeds_

_and you baptized me_

_with the names of water_

_in a language_

_which was not mine,_

_in a land where even the birds_

_have ceased to remember_

_their primeval speech_

_and spoke_

_in your tongue,_

_perfect in grammar_

_and idiom._

_I was a child and you taught me_

_how to speak, how to call things_

_in that language which the birds forgot,_

_how to weave sand into palaces_

_of a million rooms, and reeds_

_into boats, sturdier than baskets,_

_how your hair would smell clean_

_like the sun, and how my hair_

_could tangle and form mangroves_

_in which little crystal fish_

_would be hatched,_

_precious, a hoard, a ransom._

_But only my name is water,_

_flowing syllables of tears._

_You forget:_

_I am not of water but of air–_

_as you are of fire, as it burns_

_still within you, raving_

_then raging, restless, translucent_

_but unfree, bound to wicks,_

_to wood,_

_to oil whom you say is my wayward brother._

_I shall cease to be a child,_

_cease to be the offspring_

_of a muse and your desire;_

_I am to turn into a man,_

_one day, one day long away_

_into an unstable future–_

_for even as I am with you_

_you know that I must depart_

_and seek the storms of my birth._

I am certain now that this book is about me. Or at least pertains to me. It’s not autobiographical. Nothing in this book is about the details of my life; except everything in this book is about the details of my life.

There are some things which I will not write about. Rather, there are some subjects which I cannot write about. I play it out in my mind, I speak it out loud, but I will never write it down. (A fear of permanence?–remembrance?) Like a line I was toying with while on the train. It sounded good, one of the better permutations of words that I had thought of, but I didn’t write it down. In fact, I made sure not to write it down. Now I had forgotten it, but it seems that it doesn’t matter one bit. If I remember that line, the memory of it would be so much better, something I lost but I had found again, the Platonic anamnesis, the forgetting of forgetting; not remembrance but recollection.

But this is not what I mean. I censor myself. I forbid myself from writing things down. I wish to forget those memories. I never chose to become a writer for this very reason.

Supposedly memory is raw material for writing, but there are some memories which I cannot touch.

The memory of falling, for example.

And yet this book writes itself. It writes my memories, or at least how I remember them even before they happen. It’s magical and scary. It’s as if this book is telling me how I ought to recollect my memories before the memories even form.

It’s uncanny.

<>

“I haven’t seen you here for a while,” Jonghyun remarked when I went to the bookstore to investigate.

“I have been busy…”

“Oooh, did you meet someone? You seem like a different person than when I first saw you,” he teased me.

“Well, there is someone…” I told him. I don’t why but it seems easy to open up to Jonghyun. His kindness is so disarming, like Minho’s.

“Tell me, Taemin. You know, I’ve lived in this town all my life, I _know_ everyone here.” His tone was playful.

“It’s Minho.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s Minho, you know, tall guy, always wearing black, big round eyes and plump lips,”

“I know how he looks like… you’re shitting me right?” he went through his bag and took out his phone. He shuffled through it and showed me a photo. “Is this the Minho you’re talking about?”

It was a photo of him and Minho.

I was taken aback. Jonghyun seemed panicked… no, he seemed incredulous, like he’s witnessing something that should not be happening.

Could it be? Could he and Minho be in a relationship?

“Are you certain it is him? Because if this is a joke, I am not laughing…”

“I… yeah. I’ve been spending time with him for weeks now. We even spent time here in the bookstore…”

“No way…” Jonghyun said softy.

“I’m sorry, if he’s your boyfriend… I didn’t know… I thought…”

“It’s not that,” he cut me off. Jonghyun left the counter he was manning and went to the door. He turned over the “Open” sign hanging at the door. He gestured me towards one of the couches they have on the bookstore for patrons sit on while reading.

“Taemin remember when you asked about the owner of the bookstore?” I nodded. “Well, that owner is the Minho you’re seeing. My bestfriend, Minho.”

“But you see, Taemin,” Jonghyun continued on, “Minho is in a coma right now. He was in a plane crash three months ago and hasn’t woken up since then… he’s plugged on life support right now.”

<>

I’ve been moving along as in a daze, as though I am sleepwalking, and that this revelation doesn’t concern me.

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you knew you were dreaming and yet you continued in the dream, and that the realization didn’t harm your dreaming? Or one of those days where you question the veracity of existence, where you question everything around you–if they’re real, if you can actually touch them, if you are really breathing and walking and continuing on with life? Or whether it’s all just a big game, a simulation, a dream? I feel like I’m in one such state, the uncertainty, the feeling of utter and terrible lostness. The confusion of the man waking up in the morning, bleary-eyed, limbs heavy, a restlessness in his head even while he had a full night’s untroubled sleep. Sometimes I feel like I’m observing somebody else, experimenting with reactions, with life. And that none of this concerns me. But then it does.

What is terrible about it is that sometimes I forget that I am still healing. Sometimes it feels exactly like I’ve always felt–that I am still myself from the last time I was well. That I am still me, despite this. It’s good that I forget. But then it’s terrible when I remember what I have. It’s terrible because it comes like a sudden blow from the inside, something I would never be prepared to face, never be comfortable with, something which I know eats at me exactly like poison does because that is what it is. Poison, metaphoric or otherwise.

I know that everybody keeps on telling me that I am too hard on myself, but in moments of extreme despair, I look into the mirror and whisper that–poison. I don’t know why I say that. It does nothing. It certainly doesn’t help.

Though for the record, I want to say that I have no desire to participate any further, that I am tired of playing along. Such statements are empty until I take a fatal step.

<>

I called Jinki that night and told him of the mysterious black book… of the fatal (perhaps imagined) weeks I had with Minho, of the coma, of the lingering and unceasing guilt and fear of the plane crash. I told him all.

I was convinced I am going crazy – that I have gone crazy. That I finally reached the breaking point and that my trauma has finally led me to this.

My curse is to linger and to suffer, as all men should. I cannot escape this.

A part of me remains hopeful. If this isn’t all real… if my time with Minho isn’t real then I must drag myself forward and move on.

But if it is real… if it is real…

<>

How could one not fall in love with a town where one has fallen in love in? Memories are as plentiful as there are places. And when that love for the person has passed, what of those same places where memory had taken root? But memories are not indelible. A new love arrives, new stories are given birth to, but the backdrop of the town remains the same.

One grows fonder of this town when all the passing love-affairs have healed. Some slight bitterness may remain, but also a sense of hope, of continuing newness.

And this is how I leave this town: hopeful and steeled with a newfound determination to seek the truth. Armed only with this mysterious book I found fatefully on a small town bookstore and the knowledge that Minho exists, I left this town that taught me I can live again.

<>

“Welcome back,” Jinki said when I finally arrived back at the city. He was extra-welcoming to me, as if I am some fragile prodigious son who’s finally found his way home. In a way, I was and Jinki might have truly believed that.

“I am sorry I sent you there alone. I should have realized being alone would be bad for you…” he continued.

“Don’t be. I was almost happy there. Hopeful…” I replied. Jinki looked at me with sadness. I couldn’t stand to look back at him. I cannot stand the way people look at me with sadness, as if I am only the person that I am because of what I’ve survived, of what I’ve been through.

Minho didn’t look at me that way. He saw that I am more than what I’ve survived; that I am the sum of many things both good and bad. Minho wouldn’t look at me with sadness because he understood that some people are only broken because they haven’t been whole yet.

I started investigating about Minho’s plane crash as soon as I got home. I typed his name onto the search engine, hoping that this rudimentary investigating lead me somewhere.

I found out that Choi Minho was in the same plane I was. I immediately sought the investigation report on the plane crash and called the hospital I was sent to.

The plane crashed just off the island of Palawan in the Philippines. It is a beautiful paradise to some, with its lush jungles, clear waters, and stunning rock formations. But for me, it wasn’t like that.

The report says that the plane had 122 passengers and 6 crew members. The cause of the crash was a malfunction in one of the sensors erroneously reporting that the airplane was stalling. This caused an automated system to point the aircraft’s nose down to gain enough speed to fly safely.

Only the plane never flew safely. It’s strange reading this report. It feels like I am confronting my own death, like I am grieving for the very time.

Grief is inescapable. When one thinks of the nature of grieving–that it allows the living time to forget the dead–one must be wary of its double nature. Grief aims to lessen the pain one feels for loss, and would need to lead to a forgetting: the outpouring of emotions would be necessary for life to continue. But think of it this way–that when one dies, one hopes to be remembered by those whom one has left. Grief aims to remember this, but it aims to efface it as well.

The moment we grieve again, the dead dies a second death.

His name was indeed there. Choi Minho. Seat number 12-A… and 12-B. Did Minho take two seats? I called the hospital and asked them about the plane crash. They told me three people were initially found alive.

Choi Minho, an unnamed man, and I.

Eventually Choi Minho died from lung complications. The two that survived were flown back to Seoul as soon as they were stable.

I was reeling from the onslaught of information. If Minho was reported to die, why did Jonghyun say that he was in a coma?

I called Jonghyun and asked him which hospital Minho is in. On hindsight this should have been the first thing I do. The shock of finding out that the man you’ve spent time with for weeks does not exist tend to muddy one’s mind, after all.

But all these after-corrections do not matter now, what’s important is that I have a place to seek.

<>

I brought the mysterious black book with me. I’ve grown accustomed to having it within my person. It’s almost like a source of comfort to me, knowing that something knows what I am going through. Alas, just like every day, a new page is revealed.

_There is a sequence that moves over pain._

_One memory leading to another._

_A single row of wheat falls under the thresher,_

_Then the next._

_This is how we discover ourselves. In ruins._

_Only certain parts can survive. We only keep the ones that can feed us._

_Everything that lives must move._

_Heraclitus steps on the river, twice_

_Two different rivers, twice._

_It is a terrible predicament to die in the same where you were born._

_We must move. Bits and pieces._

I am anxious. If this were a novel, this part would be the climax; where the mystery is finally revealed, where the story finally meets is conclusion. If this is the same Minho – my Minho – then I would have found what I was looking for. If it isn’t, then all what I’ve experienced in that town was nothing but fiction.

Fiction works by pretending, but only up to a certain point. A fantasy must be believable for it to sink its hooks into hearts and be impossible to shake away.

How can I convince myself that my time with Minho is not fiction?–that I am not imagining that he exists (on the other end of the line, on the other side of the world) but that he really does–and that when I would come running toward him and bury my face in his chest, it is because I finally feel for myself his reality.

That Minho isn’t pixels, or words, or sound. That he is him, without a doubt.

<>

I feel calm, very calm, impossibly calm. I also feel stupid that I am meeting Minho in this fashion. Whatever this is.

That kind of calm. That kind of unbeating calm, that stillness, that impossible placidity, that lying-down response to fear. As though the answer was sleep. As though, the answer was asleep. It is what I have now. I feel it and I don’t know why. (Rather, it is a non-feeling, an emptiness that makes that which is absent more distinct.)

This could be it. And by it, I mean a lingering sense of dissatisfaction, or remembrance. A forever of looking-backwards. As if I have years upon years to look back on. I have the page where he first showed up in my journals. Barely two months ago. Before that, it was only a feeling, something guessed-at, shapeless, nebulous in potentiality. I guess it was correct, that feeling of dread combined with wide-eyed expectation. No, no, not correct–apt. Somehow fitting, like fingers fitting into the ridges of somebody else’s spine. Something like that. And yet, at the very same time, something inexpressible. That nameless fear, that nameless feeling.

The thing I never told him was that I loved him. I was afraid of saying this out loud. There was that time when I was ready to tell Minho this. The little games we played while walking home after a night spent drinking and talking endless talks. I wasn’t scared of speaking of love, of my disappointments, of my frustrations.

He had made me unutterably sad–so unspeakably so that instead of words which had always come easily, I could only form and re-form the beginnings of sentences, all devoured by the uncertainty of what I am to say. I was reduced by him to a babbling mess, incoherent, my body wracked by chills. All because I could never say that I had loved him. For what specific reasons, I do not think that I can (nor wish to) remember. This was when alcohol did nothing to dull the pain. If it did anything, it was to induce the same tears it was meant to fight, to subdue the suffering by feeding it oblivion.

The times that we were drunk, when all I wanted to do was to reach my hand out and touch his face but he wasn’t there. At least not entirely there. And here I thought I had the highest marks for evasion. But see, I could touch him, I could hold him, had held him, had kissed him while watching the sun rise and burn away all the deceptions we’ve shrouded ourselves with. The ceaseless wordgames, the tireless reimagination of reality, the delicate game of saying-but-not-saying.

Those memories are repeated now like a refrain. And I wish I could refrain from thinking, but I cannot. This is my curse: to remember every excruciating detail, every slight mannerism, the way he held his hands, the way he speaks, the way he looks out into the world with a touch of trepidation.

I am still myself, now. And he is still him. I am still here. I have never filled myself with so much hope. But still, but still–

<>

When I walked into the room he was in, I knew. I knew with finality and certainty that this is Minho. My Minho. The Minho I have fell in love with during my short time in that fateful town. That this Minho is real, corporeal and unimagined is there.

Granted he is in a coma, but real nonetheless.

I approached him like a puppy would approach an open hand – skittish, curious, but excited and afraid as well. All these feelings swell within me. They dance chaotically and bounce from one extreme to the other.

I sat beside him and held his hand. His name, I barely whispered.

“I am here,” I repeated quietly, as if chanting a prayer.

_I am here. I am here. Please wake up. Please wake up._

I squeezed his hand, hoping for a response.

_I am here. I am here. Please wake up. Please wake up._

The silence is excruciating. An interesting word, that: describing the feeling of being suspended on a cross–not the feeling of nails driven through flesh and ligaments and muscle, not the feeling of rough twine binding the arms and the legs on rough wood. No, rather, the sensation of being unable to breathe properly because the arms are hyperextended behind the body, constricting the lungs by crushing them pincerlike within the ribs whose purpose is precisely to protect these vital organs. I have tried this position out–and after a few seconds, my breathing becomes laborious. This, exactly, describes the feeling of silence. But the merest promise of hope–see, not hope itself, but something second-, even third-hand.

_I am here. I am here. Please wake up. Please wake up._

I open the mysterious black book, hoping for some solace, or answers, whichever comes first. I flipped through it and saw at the very last page:

_Here am I, far removed from birth;_

_there you are, under different constellations._

_Morning chases morning, to no avail;_

_Night begets night, and finally I am home._

<>

I didn’t realize, but I have fallen asleep. The moon has risen, round and bright amongst the dreary night sky. No stars shine tonight; they are drowned by the luminous moon.

Minho still lays there, unmoving, his chest rising and falling methodically. He’s here. He’s real. I hold his hand again, and this time he squeezes it.

I called the nurse excitedly, but never removing my hand from his. A doctor comes in and checks him up.

He opens his eyes and sought mine. He smiles, only to me, as if telling me I’ve done a great job at finding him. I found him. Or rather, he has found me in that town.

When all things are settled, when the doctor is convinced that he indeed has woken up, and when the machines keeping him alive was finally unplugged, we were left alone.

There is an expanse of words unsaid between us. Feelings we have yet to breach and hands that have yet to truly touch each other. But it does not matter. What matters is that he is there, and that I am here, and that we belong.

<>

It was revealed later on that Minho sat beside another man named Choi Minho and that the investigator mistakenly thought that having two tickets named after the same passenger was a clerical error. Luckily, Minho’s family was contacted and they were able to identify their son.

I’ve spent time reading Minho books about creation-myths (his favourite). It’s as if all the time we spent together was real.

He said that he dreamt about me that he wished to be outside of his dreams so badly. In his dreams he would poetry in a black book. The same mysterious black book I have with me now. The mysterious black book has gone empty once again. The words it once contained are gone now.

It’s as if we only ever dreamt of it.

We tried to make sense of it, but to no avail. Some words are never meant to be spoken out loud. It doesn’t matter if it is empty, or is an attempt to cage an illusion. They did not start out as forbidden, but as the longing they expressed became stronger, as the illusion they conjured became more solid, slowly, they became unspeakable.

Could one imagine that a book is a manifestation of god? In the purely poetic sense, perhaps–but beyond poetry–to believe that books (words! language!) are incarnations of the divine? An echo from the beginning of the universe, an echoing of that _Fiat lux_ , or putting thoughts into nameless humming?

Incarnation. That putting-into-flesh.

Words are homecoming. And so are dreams.

So was Minho.

_-fin-_

**Author's Note:**

> So here it is. It is actually my first time writing for a prompt and in a fanfic fest at that. And let me say, I have so much respect and admiration for writers who do this consistently. It was very challenging to me because my writing process is more like "write what I want whenever I can and just hope to the high heavens I get it done" and this project really forced me to change the way I do my writing process. It's such a different experience and I hope readers enjoy this.


End file.
